Pronunciation

For most of my life, I’ve been called “Young Savage” as a nickname, which stems from my father’s public speaking. He has to frequently introduce himself to an audience to gain support for the work he does, so he had to figure out a way to get Americans to pronounce this Polish word.

Our last name; “Jancewicz”, is pronounced “Yan-sev-itch” in Polish, and so if you say “Young Savage” quickly, you get it right.

History

“Jancewicz” means the “Son of John”, as Jan = John in Polish.

John was the name of many historical figures: the saints, clerics, rulers, great princes, kings, dukes and princes of Western Europe (John the Baptist, St. John Chrysostom, Ivan the Terrible). These were possessive adjectives with the suffixes-ck /-CC-HIV and others initially pointing to the head of the family. Thus, the descendant of a man with the name Yantsek eventually got Yantsevich name.

Then Yantsevich is also a Russian surname. There are many people in Russia, Lativia, Belarus, and the Ukraine who have this surname. Belarus was part of Russia and Belarus had borders with Poland, so people’s names were mixed over time. In 1921, territories of Belarus were given to Poland. The Polish people begun writing the surname “Янцевич” (Yantsevich) in Polish as well, and this was the beginning of the surname JANCEWICZ. The first docs with this “new” surname, are in the church of Gmina Szemietowo in 1909 (here are the docs in Polish).